Nearly 18 percent of the trucks inspected during Sept. 5's Operation Air Brake were put out of service for brake-related defects,
and another brake inspection blitz is being planned.
Operation Air Brake is sponsored by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators. The most recent event, which was publicly announced, took place September 5 when the braking systems of 11,294 vehicles were inspected during 16 hours of roadside checks. More than 2,000 of those (17.8 percent) were placed out of service because of brake-related defects. Three-quarters of those were brake adjustment problems.
This was higher than the out-of-service rate for the September 2000 announced event, during which 8,912 vehicles were inspected and 16.7 percent were put out of service.
Of the nearly 93,000 brakes checked, 29,000 were equipped with manual slack adjusters and about 64,000 had automatic slack adjusters. CVSA reports that 9 percent of the brakes with manual slack adjusters and 3.7 percent of the brakes with automatic slack adjusters were placed out of service.
The next Operation Air Brake event will be an unannounced 16-hour inspection campaign that will take place sometime in October.